Our Mission and Principles

ADC was founded on the premise that an expert witness must take a scientific stance in litigation work and in research designed to inform policy. Adopting the scientific method in our work brings a clarity and simplicity to our reports and testimony that highlights key issues in sharp relief for plaintiffs, defendants, judges and juries. Juries have responded in post-trial interviews that our testimony was clear and believable. Attorneys have said that our work is the “finest attorney work product they have ever received.” Other attorneys have said, “I have worked on this case for years and your work opened my eyes to issues I had not seen.”

The Principal

Dr. De Vany has published approximately 100 scientific papers, books, and reports. His work has appeared in leading journals including the Economic Journal, American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Law and Economics, Journal of Business, Review of Economics and Statistics, Stanford Law Review, Energy Journal, Energy Law Journal, Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Transportation Research, Journal of Cultural Economics and his articles have been reprinted many times in collections of Critical Writings in Economics and in Classics in Transportation Analysis. Dr. De Vany wrote the chapter on The Movies for the Handbook of the Economics of Art and Culture, and the entry on Property Rights in the Electromagnetic Spectrum for the New Palgrave Dictionary of Economics and Law. Dr. De Vany received a B.A. in 1963 from the UCLA, an M.A. in 1965 and a Ph.D. in 1970 from UCLA. He has held visiting appointments at the University of Chicago Center for the Study of the Economy and the State and the University of Chicago Law School. Dr. De Vany served as Vice Chairman of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Committee on Transportation Noise and on the NAS Jamaica Bay-Kennedy Airport Environmental Study Committee. He was a member of the American Statistical Association Advisory Committee to the Civil Aeronautics Board. He served as Expert to the US District Court where his role was to referee the testimony of opposing experts. He has also served as an "expert to the experts", reviewing and critiquing their work prior to testimony. His biography is listed in Whose Who in America and Whose Who in the World. If you have access to JStor, you can find Dr. De Vany's published papers as well as a list of papers that cite them (beware, there are 15 pages).

Our Motion Picture and Entertainment Capabilities are Unsurpassed

Distinguished reviewers have this to say about Hollywood Economics:

'This book provides dramatic evidence that, in comparison with the film industry, normally uncertain markets are virtually sure things. It will be extremely valuable to anyone with an intellectual, financial or other interest in the market for popular films and for anyone concerned with analysis of subjects characterized by extreme uncertainty.' William J. Baumol, Professor of Economics, New York University

'A heretical and wise perspective on the economics and consumer patterns of Hollywood. Provocative and eye opening for its depth and intelligent analysis.' Thom Mount, Producer and former Universal Studios President

'De Vany's book will soon be among the very few classics on the entertainment industries. Even those who are not very familiar with the sophisticated statistical and econometric tools that he uses will understand the arguments, which are explained with great clarity and lucidity.' Victor Ginsburgh, Professor of Economics at Université libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

'If you want an applied exposition of the "wild" type of uncertainty, this is the book. I know of no better text to understand kurtosis, the contribution of the very small to the very large, and the dynamics of rare events. The value of this book lies way beyond the film industry. It is written with great clarity.' — Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Bestselling author of The Black Swan

Combining close to a dozen published scientific papers on motion pictures and the book that put motion picture economics on a scientific foundation with our deep experience in working with studios and other parties in motion picture litigation puts our consulting in another league. We can do the simplest analyses and the most difficult, always with a deep scientific foundation combined with equally deep knowledge of the contracts and institutions that make the business work. Our experience is summarized at the Case Experience page.

Among the major issues we have dealt with is the valuation of a film. Often these cases arise because a film was not completed or released or did not fulfill the expectations of one or more of the participants in its revenue or profit outcome. We have dealt with many of these cases involving major and minor films and pirated films as well.

We are Experienced and Highly Capable in Entertainment Divorces and Wrongful Death

Drawing on our extensive publications and experience in entertainment economics, we have done numerous consulting or testimony engagements involving divorce and wrongful death of entertainers, producers, or set designers/constructors.

The changes under way in natural gas are precursors for deregulation and market-driven systems in other industries, such as electricity, oil, airports, airlines, banks, trucking, shipping, railroad, commodity exchanges, and telecommunications. This book examines the transformation of natural gas and pipelines as the pipelines adopted open access to their transmission capacity to shippers at market-based rates. The transformation was stunning as prices tended to converge in all national markets as the network of pipeline interconnections evolved. After just a few years of pipelines opening their capacity to shippers competing for transmission for their natural gas supplies, prices converged toward an arbitrage limit so narrow that there were no profitable trades. In the last chapter, the authors look to create a form of transmission right -- somewhat like a small pipeline within the capacity of the whole pipe -- that could transform the natural monopoly aspects of pipelines into a competitive market in transmission rights. Subdividing the transmission capacity into individual, non-interfering, transmission rights essentially creates many pipelines of varying capacity for one and creates a competitive market in place of a monopoly.

According to a distinguished reviewer the book is: "An illuminating work showing how the public can benefit by ingenious use of the market mechanism to replace government regulation. At a time when regulatory arrangements in natural gas, electricity, and telecommunications are in upheaval the study contributes understanding of the issues as well as promising guides for policy."-William J. Baumol, director C.V. Starr Center for Applied Economics New York University.

In modeling the Western Systems Power Pool, a network of interconnected power injection and withdrawal points (final markets) Dr. De Vany and Dr. Walls find the markets to be highly integrated. The impulse functions across markets in the network are shown here.

The off-peak impulse response functions, graphed in the figure to the left, provide a picture that is consistent with rapid price convergence over the network. Notice the rapid damping down of price shocks within a few days. We imposed a one standard deviation price shock in a single market among the five interconnected markets and watched as prices converged both in the originating market and the other markets it trades with.

In every market, price shocks originating at that market and propigating over the network to every other market are quickly damped. No price shock exceeds $0.4 in any market after just one day of trading; and this is true no matter which market experiences the initial price shock. Relative to the mean off-peak price of about $6.00, this is a minor price deviation and it persists only a day. From Arthur De Vany and W. David Walls, "Price Dynamics in a Network of Decentralized Power Markets," Journal of Regulatory Economics, 15:123-140 (1999).

Our extensive energy consulting and testimony is listed on the Case Experience page. Our clients in this work include SoCalGas, Transmountain Pipeline Company, Deep Tech, Transco, and CORAL/Shell Trading.

Our Work in Air Transportation and Competition is Founded on Rigorous and Pathbreaking Research and Years of High Level Advisory Board Service

Our Methods

Using our “theory of the case” method, we identify the key propositions on both sides of the litigation and test them against the evidence to make a compelling case for the facts and arguments that are rejected or supported by the evidence and show what findings they support.

Dr. De Vany has become expert at applying the latest cognitive science to the testimony of opposing experts. This testimony often is guilty of biases identified by cognitive research: framing, anchoring, probability blindness, ignoring conditional probability in linkages of events, representativeness, biased recall, and typicality.